President Pere Aragonès' demand to establish in the Spanish legislature that the conditions for holding a referendum in Catalonia have just begun, after taking the amnesty for granted, has been received coldly by the main opposition groups. While the PSC has ignored the issue and insists on placing the negotiation within the scope of the Congress of Deputies, Junts has demanded that the head of the Government "not speak on behalf of third parties or take anything for granted", because this negotiation "is of parties and not governments.”
The socialists have called a speech by the president “disappointing”, “tasteless” and “intrusive”, which, according to the PSC spokesperson, Alícia Romero, “shows us that we are where we were”, with a “weak and alone” Government, which It is based solely on the 33 ERC deputies and is “incapable of articulating a stable majority that would give it security in this legislature.”
The socialists ignore the issues related to the amnesty and the right to self-determination raised by the president and the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, will focus tomorrow on “the problems that Catalonia has.” Even so, Romero refuted the demands that Aragonès places as the majority consensus of Catalans by recalling that in the last three elections in Catalonia the results “were very clear” in favor of his party. The spokesperson contrasted the proposal for the president's self-determination with “the plurality and diversity of Catalans.”
Both the PSC and Junts reproached the president for speaking about the negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in the general policy debate, which made them agree in the criticism that the president seemed to speak “as the national coordinator of ERC.” instead of as president.
A year after leaving the Government, Junts carried out a severe analysis of the Aragonès speech, underlining both its "solitude and isolation", and an approach "empty of content, full of clichés, without a common thread", also alluding to "incompetence and ideological prejudices to go further". In this critical line and attempt to minimize Aragonès' entire line of argument, the parliamentary spokesperson, Mònica Sales, drew a line with the Catalan Executive in the context of the investiture negotiations. "Do not speak in our name," she said, "we negotiate with discretion and those who negotiate are the parties."
The post-convergents thus made clear their distance from the Republicans on all fronts. Sales accused the president of having encouraged the rupture with the pro-independence entities, and therefore stressed that he does not have "credibility" to speak of unity when approaching negotiations with Madrid. Regarding the framework for holding a referendum in the next legislature, which the president linked to the Claridad agreement that will be presented shortly, Sales recalled Junts' opposition to this Government initiative.
The common people also attacked Aragonès's "triumphalism" and "self-complacency" and regretted the "poor balance" that the president made in his presentation "because there is little to explain." Like the PSC and Junts, the president of the parliamentary group, Jéssica Albiach, advised the head of the Government “not to take things for granted, and to speak and work with prudence and discretion” because “negotiations are not a race,” she said, in reference to the competition between the two main independence parties.
The CUP also agreed on the "triumphalistic" nature of the president's speech, a "deceptive" and "ambiguous" speech, which "has nothing to do with the reality of the country," said spokesperson Laia Estrada.
The 20 deputies that make up Vox, Ciudadanos and PP in the Parliament also expressed their rejection of Aragonès' proposals and emphasized their radical opposition to the possibility of an amnesty, as well as any type of negotiation on the holding of a referendum. .
“It is more of the same: Aragonès demands a closed Catalonia, liberticide and the extinction of the Spanish language,” the spokesperson for the extreme right, Joan Garriga, summarized in broad strokes, for whom “separatism continues to punish Catalonia” and ERC He cannot “bring his chest out” of the four transformations (feminist, democratic, republican and ecological) that the president has spoken of, which Vox denies have been undertaken. On the contrary, he sees a decline in all these areas.
For Ciudadanos, the general policy debate represents the confirmation that this legislature in Catalonia can be "given up for lost", as well as in Spain, where it has just started, because "everything revolves around a Ferris wheel in which the amnesty is and independence, which are two unconstitutional aberrations," argued spokesperson Anna Grau, who regretted that "a small and dwindling minority" of the pro-independence movement, which Ciudadanos accuses of trying to "deal a new blow to the heart of popular sovereignty and coexistence ”, is going to “distort the true majority in Spain and the real Catalonia”.
On the part of the PP, its spokesperson in the Parliament, Lorena Roldán, pointed out that “separatism has been living in a parallel reality for some time” and that Aragonès' speech has done nothing more than demonstrate it, in her opinion. “His Catalonia of eight million continues to be the Catalonia of disagreement and decadence due to nationalism,” said Roldán, for whom this community “has been experiencing an unprecedented crisis of coexistence since 2017. The popular deputy recalled that the PP surpassed votes for ERC in the last general elections and has criticized the “infamy” of the amnesty.
